Books - Mendoza in Hollywood

Home > Listing Index > Books > Mendoza in Hollywood

	Books - Mendoza in Hollywood

Mendoza in Hollywood is the third novel in the science-fiction and time travel series by Kage Baker, concerning the activities of The Company.

Themes

Here again we see through the eyes of the immortal cyborg botanist Mendoza, introduced in In The Garden of Iden
.

The main theme is, of course, the ongoing disaster that is Mendoza's life. Despite, or perhaps because of, her encounter with obsessive love and her utter immersion in the natural world of the Pacific forests, she is isolated, unstable and more or less insane. She is not only crazy, but psychic too. Only in her work can she function as she was designed to do. Unfortunately she is deprived even of that, and goes off the deep end in response to an unexplainable, but nonetheless joyful, reappearance of someone she thought was long dead.

We meet more cyborgs, such as Porfirio who are significant in the series, and also receive long expositions of the cyborgs' obsession with Hollywood (for that is where they are located), its characters, movies and untold stories, some "real," others imagined.

The real treasure in this book, over and above advancing the story arc of the Company and introducing more mysteries to ponder, is the attention to period detail and language, contrasted with the modern images of the time as portrayed by Hollywood itself. Hollywood is in fact a major character here, but cannot speak for itself, not least because it doesn't actually exist yet, so Mendoza's companions have to speak for it. This they do with great enthusiasm.

Behind all this, there is still the ongoing mystery. Up to now the rules of the game have seemed unbreakable. Cyborgs have no families, you can't go forward in time, you can't change history, Dr. Zeus exists and was founded only in the future, and the technology it uses was created by humans. One by one these rules fall by the wayside.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Mendoza in Hollywood ]

This page is based on the copyrighted Wikipedia article Mendoza in Hollywood; it is used under the GNU Free Documentation License. You may redistribute it, verbatim or modified, providing that you comply with the terms of the GFDL.

Searches on eBay